The digital business was further affected by the legacy technology running the content and retail platforms, with two different versions of EpiServer in use. The retail platform version had not been upgraded since the original sites were created, and the website also experienced Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance issues. Finally, none of the digital platforms were scalable, with multi-day outages and problems caused by traffic spikes.
We helped Arriva Bus develop its overarching digital strategy and roadmap, creating the commercial business case for change, defining, and scoping the digital ecosystem to support it, and then acting as system integrator (SI) to create the integrated digital marketing and retail solution powered by Acquia Cloud Platform and AWS.
To deliver the optimal solution, we engaged many stakeholders from across the Arriva Bus business, from commercial, customer experience (CX), and call centre leads, to regional managers, and central and regional marketing. We defined a content model and API architecture focused on giving users a connected experience; enriching journey planning, whilst providing retail and journey options to users as they browsed marketing content.
With customer experience firmly at the forefront, our team identified and created five different traveller personas to understand their needs and what would drive channel shift. We also interviewed bus drivers to understand their view about the on-bus experience. Ultimately, we documented five distinct customer journey maps, which became the blueprint for the new experience.
This method of guerrilla user testing allowed our CX designers to use customer feedback to change the prototype in real time and refine the experience. We also worked collaboratively with the Arriva Bus team in London and other locations within the UK to ensure business alignment.
We configured Acquia CMS to serve content through a number of headless APIs. This allowed a unique customer experience to be authored within the web application, with digital retail content (tickets, offers, journeys) positioned alongside relevant marketing information (routes pages). The headless API was also used to provide content for the native apps, allowing content editors to manage content for multiple client types.
Acquia DAM was also deployed to help the central marketing team control assets used. This allowed Arriva Bus to import and migrate thousands of images and files, map them to the appropriate content and manage their use in offline and online campaigns.
The new technology has also given Arriva Bus the flexibility to change the content and the flows on the site and app to match changing customer behaviours. Its teams are now easily able to modify UX and customer flows to support each customer journey.
Arriva Bus now has a single app and website using a core suite of components that have their content managed from one platform (Acquia CMS), where they can be reused and repurposed across each regional business. A more visual interface using maps with real-time journey data allows easy tracking of buses within their route and quick purchase through a streamlined booking flow.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the solution has continued to grow its user base, with visitors now over 2.6 million per month as of July 2021 and revenues up 32% year-over-year (allowing for the impact of COVID-19).
You can download and install Retail Plus POS software in a matter of minutes. There is sample data already in the system, so you can try it for any business type without any long setups. You can also call us to schedule a free live remote tutorial to help you get started. Call 888-272-4874. WhatsApp calls are welcome at 1-250-538-2150.
A basic POS system will include a touchscreen monitor, an automatic cash drawer, a barcode scanner, and a printer receipt. More advanced systems, however, will also include weight scales, portable inventory counters, customer displays, and barcode printers, among other high-quality tech.
In addition to these hardware parts, the best POS systems will have superior POS software that can help with payment processing, inventory management, eCommerce integration, and sales reports generation. It should also have the means to run a loyalty program.
POS software like Retail Plus will help establish a solid ground for your scalable business. Our Point of Sale software will keep your cashiers and managers informed, sales increasing, and even help improve your email marketing strategies.
In the case of Retail Plus, the free and paid versions are one and the same except for data capacity. This means that the free version handles up to 150 inventory items and 150 client records. The paid version has no limits at all. This allows us to help you in the start-up phase of your business with free software so you can spend the money on other essentials.
Later, when the business has grown Retail Plus can be registered and your business can take off without having to migrate to another system. We want you to focus on growing your operation without worrying about the expense of a POS system.
A quality POS software like Retail Plus offers free services for any small business looking for scalability and an easy way to process payments. It can also help your business improve analytics and sales metrics by generating reports for your bookkeeper and accountant. .
Additionally, you get a client database for customer relations management. Our POS software also offers individual client pricing and tax setups, detailed purchase history, custom orders, and reward points. You can also quickly search for customers in the database and sort their transactions by purchase dates.
Furthermore, you get inventory management features that help you create and track purchase orders, sales promotions, and product serial numbers. You can also track inventory that goes into gift baskets and kits.
A point of sale (POS) system is a computer and software setup that provides retailers with key mission-critical functions to help run their businesses. It is an indispensable retail management tool. The main functions are:
Where are you getting this notion from, if true it would be really scummy of them to keep running everything like nothing is happening and even having sales and promotions for a game that they plan on shutting down imminently, taking money from people fully knowing that the money they spent will be wasted. But the company track record is in line with such possibility so nothing really surprises me.
In any way, merge into classic wont really work, the people from live that wanted to play classic went there long ago, and then mostly left it also, the ones that are left i dare say have no intention on playing classic.
Merging into EU is the only viable way to keep the game going and maybe keep the players that dont want to start over from quitting all together, but we will be merging into a totally different economy, and gear situation, most there are running on a paragon +10 or higher gears, +10 or higher runes/gems, all of the collections were provided through various events. Also i doubt that gameforge would go through all this extra work of converting every single character to be in line with their version even if it can be automated to a point, for what 50-100 players, doubt its worth the manhours for them.
There is no such thing as merging retail into classic, if they do it for me it is plainly closing of aion retail. I do not care what they do with my chars from that point on, whether they delete them or pretend they gave me another char on classic that I never asked.
None of the above. If NCwest decides to stop running retail they will have to pass the right to a different publisher including all the existing information or shit it down. Of course they don't have to retain the accounts or data but they would be selling the title of the game and it could run as a different instance via steam for example.
There is no way the server is merged into EU and there is no chance you can equate the spending here to there and there is no way you can just merge to the GF servers that are located in Frankfut. Remember retail is aimed to the NA crowd so it will have to continue focusing on them including hosting and localisation.
Aion retail will probably continue running same as BnS and Lineage. Most of these games if not all have moved to AWS and the hosting g cost is small. So as long as the games make more money from their OPEX theu can keep running. However, given the huge drop of population and since our funders have moved away it may be the case that the current model is not viable in which case we come back to the options I mentioned before.
I got my thread removed by making a suggestion to remove the private servers so all those players either come back to retail or classic. There's more players on private servers than EU and NA retail combined.
The only realistic solution is either open a international server and merge NA and EU there or move EU to NA server.... Then there is the ping issue, is it worth it to have a game that has slightly more people and lots of lag, or no people but no lag? The no people, no lag, the game is going to shut down soon, look at Tera, it just recently shut down because it was a dead game, youtube the farewell video and it's sad to see, but this is the reality of Aion too now. Let's not forget Aion 2 is around the corner, and it's a mobile game, I think any players currently on retail (which is only like 100 in NA or less playing throughout the day) will go to Aion 2 for mobile and not be wanting to return to this game. Here's the fun part.... Aion 2 isn't going to be good, it's going to be mobile, automated and a huge cash shop more than you'd ever seen a game be ever. People will play it and within a month, the population is going to be dropping and there will be little players left like there are now.
Which brings me up to my next point... If NC Soft wants to save face, they'd release Aion 2 for PC. What's going to happen is the mobile version is going to die, and they'll release Aion 2 for PC maybe... But there will be zero interest in it.
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